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Jewish World Review March 29, 2005 / 18 Adar II, 5765 Hillary's friends are setting her up By Peter A. Brown
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Hillary Clinton is being set up by her political friends and news-media allies.
Some Washington pundits are rethinking their conventional wisdom. The result is an emerging belief inside the Beltway that she has successfully moderated her political image.
In their view, Clinton has convinced bumpkins in The Great Beyond that she's no longer a loony liberal, but has remade herself into a centrist Democrat.
History, however, is not rife with politicians who were able successfully to recraft an ideological image already firmly engrained in the American psyche.
Just because she appears to get along with her Senate Republican colleagues does not mean that, in the public's eye, she has become a moderate with a serious chance to win the White House in 2008.
The Hillary-as-centrist crowd believes that because:
Methinks Hillary lovers are once again letting their hearts get in the way of their heads.
Let's be clear here: If Hillary Clinton wants the Democratic nomination in 2008, it is pretty much hers for the asking.
Among the few things that Republican leaders and the left wing of the Democratic Party agree upon these days is their desire for her to run.
The lefties, who understand that Clinton is changing her marketing strategy not her views, see her as a vehicle to control their own party first.
They believe it is not Democratic ideas that have failed in recent elections but their candidates' ability to articulate those views. And they see her as the best vehicle to persuade voters (but actually they are mostly talking about women) who have gone Republican to realize the error of their ways.
The GOP believes the Democrats' fundamental problem is their message and would be overjoyed to have her as the messenger — make that target — to campaign against.
All this is not new. What is, however, is the view of some in the media that she has redefined herself in the eyes of the American people.
Maybe in the District of Columbia, where politics is a 24/7 sport. But it's the off-season in the rest of the country. And in red-state America, where Democrats must break through to retake the White House, when people begin thinking about such things, Hillary will be a very tough sell.
The best evidence of how out of touch the folks in D.C. are with most of the rest of the country is a survey MSNBC's Chris Matthews did of the rotating pundits he has on his show.
Nine of 12 said they thought Hillary would do better in the states Bush carried last year than did John Kerry.
Don't believe a word of it.
Kerry, for all his political liabilities, could plausibly argue that his military record and Senate foreign-affairs experience qualified him to be commander in chief.
Any woman — unless she served in the military, which Clinton did not — faces a daunting challenge to meet the threshold needed for most Americans seriously to consider them for the Oval Office.
Condoleezza Rice, a national-security expert, might pull it off. Clinton, whose career has been based on promoting social programs and criticizing the Pentagon, would seem to face an even higher standard.
Despite the activity on her behalf, maybe Clinton will realize that she couldn't win the November election — that her candidacy would just make it easier for the GOP to keep the White House.
Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, no less of a polarizing figure, opted against running for fear he would drag his party down to defeat in 1984 against President Ronald Reagan.
But, it was easier for Kennedy. He was less of a sure thing for the Democratic nomination then than Clinton would be in 2008, and he would have faced a popular incumbent while this time the seat will be open since Bush can't run again.
Centrist Democrats, who can count electoral votes and don't believe she can convince Americans she isn't the liberal they had always thought, are crossing their fingers Hillary does the same.
They understand how difficult it would be for her to win any states that Kerry could not, and they realize that, without some states in 2008 that they lost in 2004, the Electoral College will continue to deny any Democrat seeking admission.
Republicans want her to run because they think the centrist Democrats are right.
If Hillary were to put her party's future ahead of her ego, she would listen to her enemies rather than to her friends.
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Peter A. Brown is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
